I love music of the holiday season. Obsessively.

I add about 100 songs to my library every year. I possess some of the best songs that you might never have heard, some unusual versions of songs you know and some recordings that you would loathe me for bringing into your life.

So I’ll start this year’s countdown to Christmas Day with one of the best-known songs of the season.

“Deck the Halls” started its existence with a Welsh melody that was written more than 400 years ago. In the 1860s, Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant put Christmas words to the melody, which had been used to celebrate the New Year.

Oliphant’s original first stanza remains intact – with the exception of one line. His original third line was “Fill the meadcup, drain the barrel.”

That apparently didn’t sit well with folks in Pennsylvania. If kids were going to sing this song, filling meadcups and draining barrels wouldn’t do. So they changed the lyrics.

To “Don we now our gay apparel.”

In 1877, “gay” was not widely used the way we use it in 2025. Had the Pennsylvanians realized how the meaning of the word would change, it’s a good bet they would have come up with something else.

In fact, I’m surprised the people who see gay as some sort of evil haven’t tried to change the lyrics. Even back to the mead and the barrel draining.

I didn’t use any lyrics when I did my reimagining of the song in 2023. I fooled around a little with the melody instead and created something I thought was more contemporary.

It’s one of three tracks on my holiday EP, “Holiday Hospitality,” which you can hear on pretty much every streaming service (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) and buy digitally on Amazon and iTunes.

Here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXYDm6kDsK0&list=RDHXYDm6kDsK0&start_radio=1 from YouTube Music. I hope you enjoy it, in gay apparel, a full meadcup, or both.